This landmark work examines the dynamics of judgement and its impact on events that take place in human society, which require the direction and control of social policy. Research on social policy typically focuses on content. This book concentrates instead on the decision-making process itself. Drawing on 50 years of empirical research in decision theory, Hammond examines the possibilities for wisdom and cognitive competence in the formation of social policies, and applies these lessons to specific examples, such as the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the health care debate. Uncertainly, he tells us, can seldom be fully eliminated; thus error is inevitable, and injustice for some unavoidable. But the capacity for make wise judgments increases to the extent that we understand the potential pitfalls and their origin. The judgment process for example involves an ongoing rivalry between intuition and analysis, accuracy and rationality. The source of this tension requires an examination of the evolutionary roots of human judgement and how these fundamental features may be changing as our civilization increasingly becomes an information and knowledge-based society. With numerous examples from law, medicine, engineering, and economics, the author dramatizes the importance of judgment and its role in the formation of social policies which affect us all, and issues the first comprehensive examination of its underlying dynamics.

Contents note:

PART I: Rivalry -- 1. Irreducible Uncertainty and the Need for Judgment -- 2. Duality of Error and Policy Formation -- 3. Coping with Uncertainty: The Rivalry Between Intuition and Analysis -- PART II: Tension -- 4. Origins of Tensions Between Coherence and Correspondence Theories of Competence in Judgment and Decision Making -- 5. The Evolutionary Roots of Correspondence Competence -- PART III: Compromise and Reconciliation -- 6. Reducing Rivalry Through Compromise -- 7. Task Structure, Cognitive Change, and Pattern Recognition -- 8. Reducing Tensions Between Coherence and Correspondence Through Constructive Complementarity -- PART IV: Possibilities -- 9. Is It Possible to Learn by Intervening? -- 10. Is It Possible to Learn from Representing? -- 11. Possibilities for Wisdom -- 12. The Possible Future of Cognitive Competence